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The Photo Wacky Winglings merged with the Dolltopia Funnies into a single category. From now on, you can find them in the shiny new menu "Photo Funnies with Gisi & Toys". I know, the name doesn't flow so well, let's hope I'm more creative in other things. ;)

Why is that? Because Giselda is still the only finished Seekers doll and thus could only go on adventure alone or with other dolls. Nareen, however, is a Pullip and was thus scheduled for the Dolltopia Funnies. Due to that I have some gags rotting on my harddrive for almost a year because I couldn't decide whether they're a Photo Wacky Wingling or a Dolltopia Funny!Now they are happily merged (there are some new ones, btw!) and I decided to write "toys" instead of "dolls" since action figures could make some funny yokes sometimes too, who knows!

My husband and I dived head-on back into the miniatures hobby after a 10-15 year long break. So much to do for that now!

I must admit though, I'm very unhappy lately about the time it takes to translate everything to English when there's 0 feedback. The only comments from English-spoken folk are for Sims (which moved back to its own website long ago) or made by spambots. That's a very peculiar change from before.So from now on I will publish everything I do in German right away and will only do translations right away if it's unique and/or important content (like Dolltopia, crochet instructions, these news or any comics), the rest I'll translate when I'm bored or someone explicitly asks for something. I do understand that many things I write are not very interesting for you guys, since there are countless English blogs and Youtube channels covering dolls, board games etc, but there is not that much material of this kind in German and so the German part of the website is my main focus of attention.There are things which I will never translate, e.g. board game reports and short stories - my English isn't good enough to translate prose (it's bad enough in Dolltopia!) and the reports are just a funny side thing. To avoid confusion, the menu points for these things are not visible in English.Rest assured that any kind of comic or photo story will ALWAYS be translated (although not always free of errors, lol).

Currently I work on the last few Xmas presents and keep hoping for some sunnier days. It seems that mother Nature has no plans for that, though, so I guess I'll have to ponder on how to put up enough lamps to lighten up the table. I need photos to finish sewing patterns, articles and other tutorials! ^^

I'm truly sorry about that, but this year turned out to be quite a rollercoaster! The flooded basement kept us busy for months, the extreme noise pollution by the party spot in the neighbouring village once again ruined the whole summer for us and cost us many nights of sleep, and overall we're just unhappy with our living situation.

So we're looking for a new abode, and since my husband finally has a permanent contract at the university (that was the best news in 20 years after all those fixed-term contracts!) we're for the first time in our lives in a position where we can think about buying a house or flat and so our next move is supposed to be our last. As nice as thinking about finally taking roots is, though, as hard it is to decide for the right thing and then find it. For months there's nothing but stress and so far there isn't an affordable home on the horizon, mostly due to the problematic situation with free lots close to Bonn (but sure, also due to our requirements. Something that requires us to take a credit MUST be the perfect thing!) Over the last few months, every free minute we didn't spend with house search either went into decluttering for the next move or into crocheting rattles for babies, since that earned me a little pocketmoney. To complete the stress I had some "funny" hickups, e.g. my graphics card died (okay, after 11 years it had done its duty...).

About the proclaimed server move, our provider did NOT contact us about our order and so we don't have a new server yet and thus didn't move the website(s). Why our order is ignored - no idea. Up to then their service was always great but this time something went wrong. Calling them and getting to the root of it is a bit drowned out by all the other stuff. I'm done with the digital backups and decluttering, though, so once we'll get a new server (just not as cheap as the ordered one) we'll be ready to go.

For the rest of the year we'll take a break from looking for an estate to get some other delayed things done and also to decompress. So I finally come around to write some things for this website! I have soooo much material to edit! Of course I also have to sew a few Xmas gifts etc, but over the next weeks there will be some move on Eph's Den! I have photos, sewing patterns, crochet patterns, material for the board games/miniatures section and and and, and I HAVE to edit some of that because else a) I'll burst from impatience soon and b) the chaos on my harddrive will never get better. ^^ There's so much old artwork missing in the galleries, too... Oh, to have time to draw, that would be nice. Well, if nothing else I'll have time once we've found our home and moved!Keep your fingers crossed that we'll find the right house/flat in 2017 and just drop by every now and then to see what's new in the galleries and articles. :)

once again I can only apologize for my inactivity and announce that this will be the state of things for a while longer.

A little while ago there were heavy storms and floods in and around our area and our room in the cellar was flooded. Apart from several hundred Euro in damages and sadness about the loss of some unique things (e.g. handwritten novels I wrote back in school) that also causes a ton of work.

Additionally we finally ordered a new server since the current one is quite old by now and failed a few times in recent years. That means work too since there's a lot of old data that needs backups and sorting. (I will warn before the actual data move separately, since my websites won't be accessible for a while during that phase.)

Last but not least I'm ill and tired. Constant sleep deprievement and stress from noise (especially from events in the village opposite to ours and the neighbourhood, but also from very heavy ships) and shit like the cellar room and frustrating weekends where we can't spend any quality time due to too much noise and/or sleepless nights really gnaw at my substance. For us it's impossible to sleep with up to 80dB of music at 3am and when the noise restarts at 8am right away you only exist in zombie mode. My thyroid, for instance, is completely messed up again after only two good months and I suffer from several bad symptoms.

Let's see when I can continue Dolltopia, at least. I hope to publish at least the odd outtake now and then but I'd prefer to work on the actual storyline ASAP.

At least the events will cease in late October for some months again, so I hope I'll be able to get some things done over the winter.

What a bumpy start into the new year! Since the end of October I was ill to very ill all the time and I didn't go to a doctor because I was only disappointed there for the last decade. One day I couldn't take it anymore, though - and the female doc here is the best! Instead of succintly telling me to loose weight to get rid of my palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness and a resting heart rate of over 100bpm like her predecessors she actually did some tests and found out that the dosage of my thyroid med was totally off. (Back when I was put on that dosage I weighed ~16 pounds more, ate a lot of soya and was on birth control. No doc cared to check on me and actually I'm pretty sure that this played a HUGE role in me breaking my leg, since the symptoms were the same then and they got worse and worse the more weight I lost.) Since they were adjusted I feel better all the time, I can leave the house again, use the exercise bike, tinker and craft, think and most of all sleep at night without fearing that I won't wake up again on the next day!I was so thankful I almost cried.Now I have to catch up with a lot of things though, here on the website as well as at home! ^^

Alas, ever since then Dolltopia is back from its involuntary short break and seems to update every Friday right now, ha ha. Currently I only have photos left for one more episode though and I'll need some new custom-made characters very soon. Depending on the weather next week there might be a short break of 1-2 weeks in the updates.

Sims moved back to its own website, which can be found as always at sims.ephralon.de. I do plan to update again starting in March, but just sporadically.

Christmas and my birthday brought a truckload of new dolls to my home - Amazon had some amazing sales! I still have to take heaps of photos and I also got some duplicate dolls for customizing and want to try and learn some new things this year.

In the crafting department there's also a lot of photos just waiting to be uploaded and I just started a new craft called quilling.

I won't say anything about my other plans before they take shape, that way you won't be disappointed when I can't get all of them rolling in time. ^^ But I have big plans!

I finally start to settle in here. Yep, it's still as boring and miles from anywhere as before, but at least now that winter is on its way it's getting more silent and I get used to having to buy everything by online shopping. By now we don't have to spend every weekend setting up stuff anymore.At the beginning it was hard to snap out of the lethargy and depression, but once you grab yourself by the neck and force yourself to do a little something every day it starts getting easier over time and you start to do more and more each day. :) By now I'm so busy that even health problems usually can't stop me from finding something to enjoy that day.

The only thing that slows me down is the weather. Currently I have most fun working on Dolltopia and I fill the rainy days with sewing, crafting and various work on the backdrops, but to actually take photos it's sadly too dark most of the time. Therefore the long pause since the last update. Over the last days I had two short time-windows with bearable light conditions and I took some episodes in advance. But even this material will only last for three or four episodes.Well, I'm patient! As soon as I'll see another chance I'll take more photos! ^^I hope there will be some nice sunny days eventually and that I can take so many photos in advance to update Dolltopia regularly once a week next year. That would be great but it also depends a bit on how the story develops. When you have a good stock of photos it's not a problem when you run into a scene that requires a handful of new props, but when the story suddenly calls for 20 new things and a new backdrop plus props on top of that things can get tight. So I won't announce anything before I'm sure to be well armed. So let's see how the weather will turn out in the upcoming weeks! ^^The best thing about photo stories for me is still that you only have to craft/sew things once. With each new backdrop, character, piece of clothing or accessoire the pool grows and future stories become easier.

Apart from all of that I'm still busy with handiwork, especially sewing and crocheting, but for the time being that only results in new photos for the galleries. After the move I still haven't found all of my unfinished projects or all the documents for them and thus the Seekers ragdolls and crochet dolls have to wait until next year.

Since I'm in the process of learning some new digital "tricks" for Dolltopia and thus have to reconnect my graphic tablet to the pc it's pretty likely that I'll start doing some Sims stuff in the near future too and new artwork for the gallery is also not out of the question!

Have to admit though that Disgaea 5 is on its way to my postbox. Those who know the Disgaea video game series will know what tremendous time-eaters these games are. I will try not to get lost in this one as much as I did with Minecraft. ^^